Tian An Men Square Shut to Pedestrians by Police : China: Dissidents had called for protest ‘walks.’ Security forces ring the main area of the square.

Security forces cordoned off the main part of Tian An Men Square on Sunday, preventing ordinary pedestrians from entering on a day when overseas-based dissidents had called for low-key protest “walks” in the square.

Schoolchildren were bused in for officially sanctioned morning and afternoon ceremonies at the Monument to the People’s Heroes in the center of the square, while paramilitary police ringed the area to keep strollers out.

As part of the crowd-control measures, firetrucks with high-pressure hoses were parked nearby. Some helmeted police armed with semiautomatic weapons stood guard near the square or cruised the city in three-wheeled motorcycles.

The square was reopened at dusk, but the Sunday night crowd numbered less than normal for a pleasant spring evening. By 10 p.m. the square was virtually deserted, except for half a dozen paramilitary police armed with assault rifles and about a dozen more police armed with pistols.

A young Chinese man walking through the square late in the evening was roughly ordered to show identification, and his bag was searched. As he walked away, a foreigner asked him why this happened.

“They have guilty consciences,” he replied.

A wreath that an officially approved group of elementary children placed at the base of the Monument to the People’s Heroes on Saturday was removed that night. After the children’s activities ended late Sunday afternoon, no wreaths or other memorials of any sort were left behind at the monument.

Throughout the day Sunday, crowds of sightseers, many of them Chinese travelers from outside Beijing, walked along a sidewalk on the east side of the square, gazing at the activities inside the cordoned-off area.

Plainclothes police officers took pictures of foreign journalists and others in the crowd, while uniformed officers repeatedly told foreign television crews to move along.

Police or army officers standing on the roof of the Revolutionary History Museum, east of the square, could be seen surveying the scene with binoculars and using cameras with telephoto lenses.